The grown up

Will Harris prepares to leave his twenties behind

In the months leading up to my 30th birthday, it suddenly occurred to me that the past decade of my life had been characterised by three things: bad dates; unopened envelopes stamped with the logos of utility companies; and the queasy, ill-informed belief that everyone I passed on the street was staring at me.

It was only then, in the home straight, staring down the barrel of my 30th birthday, that I finally realised the truth: the vast majority of my fellow Londoners were far too busy wondering what model of smartphone to get with their next upgrade to spare me a fleeting glance, let alone a reptilian appraisal of whatever outfit I’d shoehorned myself into that particular morning. It was time to face facts. I just wasn’t that special, and strange as it may sound, I walked a little taller for that.

There was good reason for my burgeoning confidence. I had a good job, a steady income, the assurance of one who had managed to survive at least ten years without stepping in front of a bus or climbing a pylon to fetch a kite and accidentally electrocuting himself. Sure, things weren’t perfect, but – having spent a large part of the preceding decade chasing perfection in all its various guises (generally the kind of guise with high cheekbones, impeccable diction, and a knack for getting their leg alongside their ear) – I had wisely decided to leave that particular brand of self-flagellation back in my 20s.

“To me, 30 was a milestone, not a millstone”

To me, 30 was a milestone, not a millstone. It meant adulthood. The big 3-0. The age at which, so the legend went, all my scrabble tiles would fall neatly into place – car, house, kids, spouse – as if nobody had noticed this wasn’t Wisconsin in the 1950s, the Internet hadn’t given us all ADHD and made us incapable of love, and we weren’t living through the worst recession since the Battle of Bosworth Field. Or whenever.

So don’t let the title fool you. This was never going to be a story in which a self-indulgent protagonist agonises over the manifold injustices of the ageing process. Where is my life going? When will I be complete? Won’t somebody, anybody give me a baby? Spare me. I don’t have a biological clock, and even if I did it would be set permanently to the cocktail hour. I was headed into my 30s with open arms.

The story that I have to tell, the story of how my life changed forever, begins in the summer of 2012. I was 29-years-old, David Cameron was on the throne, and all eyes – so they told us – were on London. One pair in particular, as I wore my newfound anonymity like a cloak along Chancery Lane, were on me.